I know the people of Liverpool still feel so strongly about The Sun's disgraceful Hillsborough slur that they will not countenance any rapprochement. But the news that a popular local sports reporter has received violent threats because he is about to join The Sun's Sunday stablemate, the News of the World, shows just how far from reality the protests have travelled.

According to a Press Gazette story, the Liverpool Echo's dedicated Liverpool FC reporter, Chris Bascombe, has been threatened and abused for accepting the NoW job. This is, frankly, stupid. It is also, as Bascombe points out, completely at odds with the facts. For the record, the coverage of the 1989 Hillsborough disaster by the News of the World - then edited by Patsy Chapman - was hugely sympathetic.

Yet, at the weekend's Portsmouth game, some fans even displayed a banner saying "The News of the World is the Sunday Sun" in order to intimidate Bascombe.

Speaking from Portugal, where he is covering tonight's match against Porto, Bascombe says: "It appears that a vocal minority cannot distinguish between The Sun and the News of the World. They are labouring under a misconception. It is ironic, is it not, that the criticism of The Sun's coverage was that it failed to check the facts. Yet the people now having a go at me have done so without checking their facts either."

In a trenchantly worded posting to the Reds All Over The Land website Bascombe railed against the anonymous commenters who have labelled him a Judas. He added: "In attempting to damage [my] reputation without having the decency to check your facts, or approach me for an explanation of my decision, you've behaved like the gutter journalists you claim to be on a moral crusade against."

Bascombe, sports writer of the year in the the north west for five successive years, has received a great deal of support from more sensible fans, and from the club itself. So he won't suffer from any internal problems when he begins his new job as the NoW's Merseyside football correspondent on October 2. Indeed, the NoW has never suffered from the same treatment as that meted out to The Sun, which is officially barred by the club from interviewing players.

So it's clear that the fans are wrong to traduce Bascombe. But I wonder if this is the appropriate moment to ask whether they are also wrong to continue to ostracise The Sun? Is that boycott justified any longer? It is almost 18 years since the lies, headlined as "The Truth", were published. None of the journalists directly involved in putting together the disgusting front page - accusing fans of being responsible for the tragedy and for hampering rescue operations - now work on The Sun's staff.

However, I readily concede that the man who made the key decision to publish the story in the form that it appeared, Kelvin MacKenzie, is a Sun columnist. So, I guess, that makes it impossible to move on.